Another good day.

I spent an hour in the Chapters bookstore this morning. Here are the books I purchased:

• Body for Life ( http://www.bodyforlife.com/ ) [This was mentioned by the manager of a local coffee shop]
• Tao Te Ching [This small book is full of gorgeous watercolor drawings] (It is also related to my earlier reading of the Tao of Zen as well as to my present reading of The Timeless Way of Building)
• The Seat of the Soul by Gary Zukov. [His earlier book The Dancing Wu Li Masters (on physics) was one of my all time favorites.]
• The Book on the Bookshelf by Henry Petroski. [I have his earlier book The Pencil. This promises to be a very enjoyable read! The jacket is very clever]
• Home Town by Tracy Kidder. [I have read all of Tracy's books, and am looking forward to this one.]
• Big Bear by Rudy Wiebe. [I bought this in Edmonton last week. It was the book that resulted in the story told as A Stolen Life, which I read a couple of years ago.]
• Shingwauk's Vision: A History of Native Residential Schools. [This was given to me by Brian Titley, when he heard that I was looking for it. Thank you!]

Now for a few more notes from The timeless Way of Building.

• "... this is just a special case of a more general effect by which the patterns in a town or building help to sustain each other, in which each pattern which is alive, itself spreads out its life." (p. 126)
• "We are very adaptive, it is true. But we can also adapt to such an extent that we do ourselves harm." (p. 129)
• "The most important thing which happens is that every part of it, at every level, becomes unique. The patterns which control a portion of the world, are themselves fairly simple. But when they interact, they create slightly different overall configurations at evry place. This happens because no two places on earth are perfectly alike in their conditions." (p. 143)
• "Nature is never modular. Nature is full of almost similar units (waves, raindrops, blades of grass) - but though the units of one kind are all alike in their broad structure, no two are ever alike in detail." (p. 144)
• "Indeed the main thing we shall deal with in these next nine chapters, is the fact that the quality without a name cannot be made, but only generated by a process." (p. 159)
• "Imagine, by contrast, a system of simple rules, not complicated, patiently applied, until they gradually form a thing. ... only the patience of a craftsman, chipping away slowly." (p. 161)
• "A pattern language gives each person who uses it, the power to create an infinite variety of new and unique buildings, just as his ordinary language gives him the power to create an infinite variety of sentences." (p. 167)
• "Architects are responsisble for no more than perhaps 5 percent of all the buildings in the world." (p. 199)
• "Your pattern language is the sum total of your knowledge of how to build" (p. 202)